Cottage Holidays Website

This is another of our own websites and one that has served us really well over the years. But, as I often write, it's in need of a bit of work now.

I did try to update the site a few weeks ago, but only got half way through it before work loads prohibited further changes, and to be honest, it's in dire need of finishing off.

It's a shame, really, because over the years it's more than earned it's keep in affiliate revenues and Google Adsense alike. Each has earned far more than I would have charged for such a site.

The basic idea is that we take a feed of aroun 1,700 cottages in the UK, add a few more from other feeds and produce this static site. There's loads more feeds I could integrate, but I just need the time.

This has got to be one of the top of my hit list to refresh, especially as when I just looked at it I found a couple of broken links.

Hopefully, by the end of February, a new version will be live. Shame it will have missed peak booking season. Oh well, there's always next year...

Holiday Flats Website

This was a simple website to advertise new a holiday flats business on the south coast.

Just a simple website to show what they had to offer. We had to convince the owners that they were not writing a tourist guide to the area as every bit of text sold the beauty and features for miles around, yet nothing mentioned the flats.

That's an important point to remember when creating a holiday flats website. The visitor to your website is almost certainly sold on visiting the general area, so concntrate on selling what you have to offer over what another place offers. If there are attractions within an easy reach then the availability of these attractions is what you should feature, not why your visitors should visit them, which could equally well apply to accommodation 50 miles away.

When creating a holiday flats website include photographs of any special features - roll-top baths, double showers, BBQ areas, four poster beds etc. Also mention all your special features in the text. But don't try to sell the general area to the visitor - that's probably already taken place.

Loan Calculator Site

Here's one of our own sites that we're still running, but as always if time allowed it could do with a lot of TLC!

Basically the original idea was to bring together loan calculators from everyone that we could find providing them. Where possible, these would be affiliate links, so that we earned a commission. Add to that Google Adsense and there's a nice little earner.

And it worked well, apart from there weren't many affiliate schemes with this simple tool. It's a shame because the reason behind the idea was the realisation that on other sites of our own, such links worked many times better than banner links.

As with many of our own sites, we've just not had the time to maintain it, giving priority to customer's websites instead. But I'm sure that over the next few months as we reduce the number of own sites that this one will be given the attention it so desperately needs. After all, it still gets some traffic for us and covers its keep.

Mobile Phone Insurance Website

This website was our first real venture into affiliate selling.

We signed up to to a mobile phone insurance white label website to enable us to make a bit of cash selling this insurance. There was a recommendation on the site that everyone creates their own micro site, or even just a single page, to help the sales. Basically, this way you link to your own site for the adverts, so that potential customers don't realise that every Google advert is pointing at the same merchant's affiliates....

It worked well, but we never had the courage to spend a lot on Adsense, nor the experience then to find good converting keywords. The site is still about and has now been extended to link to mobile phone affiliates, but as with many of our own sites, it needs some work as it's been left alone for too long.

Overall, the commissions in did exceed the Google payments out, but some months it was close cut due to the very low budget we were running with. If I had the time and patience to try again now I'd probably have a lot higher daily budget and loads more quality keywords, and maybe even make a good go of it.

Maybe it's on the list of work for when I've got a quiet hour or two...

Events Organisation Website

This was a nice little website advertising various team building events for the customer. He was buying these events from another company and putting together the full package.

This website showed pictures of some of the events and included various descriptions, contact forms etc. After a short while the customer also branched out into a security business, for which he again came back for a website. This security business has taken his full time so the events business was dropped.

Fashion Website

This was a site to advertise a designer making their own designer handbags and trying to sell them to shops. It was a simple, bright site that lasted a year or two, but then the owner decided that her brother should take over the site.

He's changed it since my original design and although I took the time and effort to create a really large sized logo, he's expanded a small one and it doesn't have the resolution. He's added a shopping area, which is nice, but the site has dropped from a good page rank to grey barred. Shame, it was a site that with a bit of TLC could have done well.

Traffic Selling Website

This website was our first to successfully use PayPal as a shopping media. It sold expired domain redirect traffic, which the buyer could choose where the traffic came from, quantity to buy and a category of website they were interested in. There was even a choice at the end of seeing the price in pounds or US dollars.

It worked well and get plenty of orders purely through search engine optimisation, but the quality of expired domain traffic, especially within the UK, is poor and although there were new customers coming on board, no repeat customers appeared. Having too much honour to keep flogging traffic that obviously wasn't doing much good, the idea was eventually dropped and all traffic routed to a popunder seller.

The other problem is that the traffic demand outstripped supply and it was taking ages to deliver the traffic. This lead to customers asking where their traffic was. Add to this some people ordering with fraudulent cards (why, we could stop the campaign mid flow) and the losses & wasted time this was creating and the site just wasn't worth the effort. Which was a shame as the orders that came in were good and created a good profit.

Recruitment Site - Part 2

This is the sister site to the ICD site I talked about last time. But as well as the static pages this one also holds the recruitment database.

On this site, the contractors can sign up, fill in some details and basically register as interested to receive work opportunities.

At the same time, companies requiring these skills can review basic details of the sort of people available and select some to go to interview. This short list are emailed and both parties can then start talking.

If the company finds a suitable candidate, the candidate pays a small fee whilst they are employed. There's a choice of fee structures for the candidates to choose from and because there are no hidden agency fees, it's an easy way to recruit temporary staff without it being overly expensive.

Contractor Recruitment Website

This site was part of a pair of websites built for the same customer, setting up a recruitment company of Compliance Directors. The twin site was far more involved, especially after the second phase, which I'll cover when I look at that site.

For this one, it was mainly about showing what was on offer and trying to get suitable candidates signed up (through the other site) and getting potential employers signed up. The idea was to bring these people together and let them do the work of an agency, thus being able to charge less than a standard agent as each party is taking on more of the work. For example, the potential employer selected a short list and emailed them through the system, but neither had contact details immediately.

Many people were fearful of upsetting agents by using this system, so although plenty of contractors signed up, the owner accidentally got into another line of business and pushed that instead. So this site was dropped and just he main site continues to this day.

Holiday Flat Website

When business was slow as we were taking off, we did concentrate on trying to get holiday accommodation websites up and running. We saw it as an area of the market that wasn't saturated, but where the websites were needed as people were likely to be booking on the internet.

As it happened, this customer was a result of general advertising, but with a bit of enthusiasm he soon became a customer.

He was advertising his apartment in Portsmouth, overlooking a harbour. The picture in the background of the site was actually taken in Liverpool's Albert Docks and it is from when the Grand Turk visited quite a few years ago (the ship used to film the early episodes of Hornblower). The Grand Turk is now in Whitby, but that is an aside from this site!

The site looked good, showed plenty of pictures and held a really nautical theme, but even with Google Adsense he wasn't able to generate the consistently booked apartment he had hoped for. He had set the apartment up as a really trendy, modern apartment with internet access and other benefits, but the income, of course, had to reflect this. To compete with neighbouring apartments he had to keep the rentals low but be booked all year round - a difficult job for any rental. I think in the end he decided to cut his loses and sold the apartment.

Holiday Accommodation Website

This is another holiday accommodation site that stayed with us until the owner's retirement earlier this year.

This website was for a small bed and breakfast in Suffolk. Advertising holidays in Suffolk, the website showed the accommodation and what the owner had to offer and dealt a lot with the nature aspect around her property.

We came into contact with this customer through mass mailings. One of the earliest mailings was received by her, just as she was contemplating a site. This gave us great hopes and we increased the mailings, never to get another positive response!

Insurance Website

This little website was a strange one. It wasn't for a local customer, but by fluke he was selling the insurance services of a company that is almost right next door to me - I can see their building from my desk.

He's an insurance broker and I built the website and he got down to the work of promoting it through his normal activities. But he knew that major changes were on the way in the financial services,literally only weeks away. When they came, he pulled the website, intending to move it to a different supplier. I spoke to him a few times and the move and redevelopment was always around the corner. We still host a holding page, nearly 3 years after the site was pulled. I'll speak to him tomorrow and find out what is going on.

Ebook Website

This site, still around, has slowly changed over the last 3 years.

It started off as a website for a financial advice ebook. It was promoted through adsense, but with changes to the financial sector, the owner was finding it difficult to maintain.

So the main emphasis of the website become on selling an ebook about playing Blues Piano. Some adsense and plenty of link building, with an article written to syndicate through a directory.

And in the near future, a new ebook will take it's place on the website. I just need to work out how to convert WPS to something I can read so that I can publish the site!

Accountants Website

Here's one that recently taught me a lesson. An early customer with a simple site. It looked OK - not fantastic, but it still looked good. Every year I contacted them with their hosting, asked them if they wanted any changes and every year the payment arrived by BACS. Safe as houses.

But I didn't pay them enough attention and they are moving their website to a local designer. No reason given, just contacted and told they are moving. Shame, but it's shown me that the personal touch when building a site must continue when the site is live. Those customers that I am in regular contact with are far more content and send me far more referrals.

So why didn't I do something simple like send them all a Christmas card??? Already got next year's planned.